15 Chapter 15: Writing Feature Stories

The Lede

Most feature stories use a delayed lede, in which you don’t deliver the main information right away but instead begin with something else. Delayed ledes can be narratives, descriptions, anecdotes, or even quotations. They should make the reader interested in the story, and that’s enough said about that. Most textbooks say you should “pull the reader in,” but be careful with that advice soaked as we all are with media come-ons and teases that don’t deliver anything at all. Sometimes deliberately trying to “pull the reader in” can lead to overwritten, lame, little vignettes that wouldn’t pull in a tennis ball if the reader were a Golden Retriever.

It’s better to say just plunge right in. Plunge in with a narrative, which begins the tale in chronological order. Or plunge in by establishing the conflict or challenge. Even direct ledes can be great. Find a writer whose work you admire and do what they do. One of the best ledes of all time was in a story about the Red Sox’s march toward the pennant. The sportswriter described the team “stepping over the Yankees’ carcass on its way to the playoffs.” What a great choice of words.

The lede that is dreaded by editors and readers alike is the question lede because it’s usually pointless: “Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to win the Kentucky Derby?” No, not really. But if I did wonder, I’d probably figure out fairly quickly that it feels great, like you just won a whole lot of money in front of a lot of screaming people. So if you must ask a question, be sure it’s one for which you have a really good answer—something unusual, or truly interesting, or a laugh riot. For example: “Do you know what Gloria Swanson said to the agent inspecting her passport?”

“If I look like this,” she said, “I need the trip.”

Story Structures

With a hard news story, you really can’t go wrong with the old inverted pyramid structure. It works for you and your readers alike: They want to know what’s going on, and you want to get them the information.

With features, though, you’re really telling your readers a story. And indeed, that’s how you should think of a feature story—not as a report or a newspaper article, but as a proper story. Yes, you’ll be telling the truth without bias, and yes, you’ll be writing tightly. But in a feature story, your reader should see characters and setting, understand the conflict, feel the atmosphere and some suspense, and enjoy a beginning, middle, and end.

All sorts of narrative structures can help you craft such a compelling story. Here’s a terrific and thorough description of the hourglass structure, with additional links to the “five boxes approach” and the “nut graf story” structures as well, from Chip Scanlan of the Poynter Institute.

You could also read the paper for a few days and cut out (or save on your computer) the feature stories you like most. How did the reporters craft them? Deconstruct the stories, and you’ll find out. Figure out what’s in the lede: Is it direct? Is it a narrative? A scene? What’s in the next graf? And the next? Where do the quotes come in, and where is the central dilemma described? Write down precisely what’s in each graf, and you’ll see the story’s structure. Notice the transitions and the repetition of certain words or images. Then use that excellent feature story as a model. And follow your instinct to tell your reader a compelling story.

Some Mistakes to Avoid

Stories from an anonymous reporter:

When I wrote my first newspaper article, for The Chronicle at Duke University, I wrote a profile of a blond-haired basketball player from Texas named Tate Armstrong. I conducted the interview in the school dining hall, where Tate and I chatted over lunch. He ate fried shrimp. He put them in his mouth, and he chewed them, and in my article, I actually described this. Now, clearly I had gone awry. Maybe people would be interested to read what the guy ate for lunch. But that he chewed? Clearly not.

So writing something totally boring and pointless is one way you can go awry when you’re writing a feature story. There are several other ways as well.

You can err by turning a rich and complicated story into a cliché.

You can err by writing too many words that don’t say a lot.

You can err by staying on the surface of things, describing only what anyone would see but what means very little—so the tree was 20 feet tall, so the ladder was aluminum, so the fireman climbed up the ladder using both hands (duh), so what? If the tree was 20 feet tall but very, very skinny and bending under the fireman’s weight, okay; if the ladder was aluminum and slick from rain, okay; if the fireman climbed up the ladder using only one hand because in the other he held a tea cup and saucer with very hot Darjeeling tea (with which to coax the woman down from the limb), then ADD THE DETAIL. But if you offer pointless details, or if you just describe what anyone could see, you aren’t contributing enough to the reader. It’s your job to hunt for details others don’t see, jot them in your notebook, evaluate them, and if they deserve to be included, describe them in your story.

And here’s the worst mistake of all, the real skull-clutcher, which you must try your level best never to make: You must never write something that, while well written, you don’t believe is absolutely true.

Let’s deconstruct my hideous story about Tate Armstrong in order to consider this. What I should have written was: “At lunch, Tate ate a big plate of fried shrimp.” That’s a fairly boring sentence, but it’s accurate. It gives specific information, which people like to read. I did consider writing, “He enjoyed them,” because “enjoyed” is a verb with more life in it than “ate,” but actually, to be perfectly honest, I couldn’t really even say that Tate enjoyed the shrimp; he really didn’t act one way or another about them. We were eating in the dining hall over blue plastic trays. The fact is that Tate might have actually hated the shrimp! He might have been gagging them down in order to increase his protein intake, because Tate even back then was a nutrition nut who ate handfuls of enormous vitamins from the health food shop (which frankly was kind of a creepy place back then, because it was small and crowded and smelled of patchouli). We all gave Tate a lot of grief for his vitamin regimen because it was so crunchy granola for a big-time jock. (Granted, we were idiots, but in our defense, Tate really was ahead of his time.)

And anyway, where was I? I was talking about how I did the right thing in that story by hunting around for a strong verb—you should always hunt for the verb—but I ended up choosing poorly and writing that Tate chewed his shrimp. Boring, boring, boring. But at least I didn’t make the bigger mistake of writing that he enjoyed them, because that might not have been true.

Bottom line: Had I been less dense as a young reporter and written a better profile of my friend Tate, I would have included the fried shrimp, because actually, people like to read about what other people eat, and also what they wear, and how they speak and gesture, and whether they squint or limp, and what their tattoo says, and so on and so forth (Tate did not have a tattoo, by the way, though this paragraph might imply he had—back then, most college kids didn’t). In any event, in a profile—as in any news story—details are key, so you must gather them. And verbs are terrific, so you must fish around for them in your mind and use them in your writing. Just remember that at all times, your details and your verbs must matter to the story—to bringing your subject to life—and they must always, always, ALWAYS (you already know this!) reveal the truth.